Chasing The Dream: The Complete Series, page 30
“For that I might be tempted to get one with you. Although my abuelita would kill me if she found out.”
“You’d have to get it somewhere your grandmother couldn’t see it.”
He chuckled, low and deep against my back, and we discussed what kind of tattoos we could get together. The more we talked about it, the more I wanted one.
“If we had time this week I’d take you to the place the guys got all their tattoos from.” He traced lazy circles along my shoulder with his thumb. “You’ll have to visit me in LA sometime. Although I’m sure there are plenty of good tattoo parlors in New York, too.”
His words were like an electric jolt, clearing my head. Oh god, what had we done?
We’d definitely crossed over the “just friends” line but…into what? No matter how mind-blowing the sex had been, we still lived thousands of miles apart. Would he want a long-distance relationship? Or did he just see this as a quick fling during Comic-Con?
I didn’t know if I was even ready for something more than that. I’d just graduated college, gotten out of a long-term relationship, and wasn’t sure where I’d be living in a month. My entire life was in flux. I couldn’t handle yet another complication right now.
But how could it ever be the same between us after what we’d done?
Did I even want it to be the same?
I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that we had to figure it out before things went any further.
Except my eyes were so heavy and he felt so good around me, behind me, against me. I couldn’t bear to bring it up yet. We would have to discuss this soon…but for now I just wanted to enjoy this moment a tiny bit longer.
EIGHT
Hector
I’d thought nothing could be better than being inside Tara, but having her fall asleep in my arms? That was pretty fucking fantastic, too.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed curled up together on the couch under a shared blanket, drifting in and out of sleep. At some point she turned to face me, nuzzling against my neck and melting further into my arms. I wrapped myself around her and let myself slip away.
Until the door opened with a loud click, jolting us both awake.
We sat up, confused, and Tara scrambled to cover herself with the blanket. I shifted in front of her, blocking her from view of whoever had barged in on us.
A woman stood at the door in a uniform, with a cart of cleaning supplies. She took one look at our naked, entwined bodies and flushed. “So sorry,” she said. “I thought the room was empty. I’ll come back later.”
The door shut behind her and Tara put a hand to her head. “What time is it?”
I grabbed my phone from my jeans, which were in a pile on the floor. “Fuck. It’s five in the morning.”
“Oh god. Last night….” She blinked sleep from her eyes. “I mean, it was amazing, but...”
Yeah.
But.
Jesus, I’d let things get way out of control. Tara was never supposed to know how I felt about her. I’d resolved to never let her get that close, to never let anyone in like that again. But I’d been so overwhelmed by her sheer presence I hadn’t been able to help myself.
We sat face forward on the couch, neither of us looking at each other. It was like we’d forgotten how to talk now that we’d had sex. One thing was obvious: we couldn’t go back to the ways things were before Comic-Con.
“What are we going to do?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want….” She chewed on one of her fingernails, like she often did when she was nervous. “Do you want to—”
I cut her off. “To get some breakfast? Yeah, I’m starving.”
“That’s...not what I was going to ask.”
She looked so serious, but I couldn’t have this discussion right now. Or ever. “Tara—”
“Do you want to talk about last night?” she blurted out.
“No. I really don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t that talking about it?” I tugged on my jeans, feeling way too exposed sitting there buck naked beside her. I should tell her…something. Not that I loved her, hell no, but that she looked beautiful this morning or that last night was amazing, or something, anything. But there was a tightness in my throat that I couldn’t seem to get words around. I didn’t know what to say. I had no fucking clue what we should do next.
“I know this whole thing is kind of crazy,” she said, slowly. “Andy and I just broke up, and you and I have been friends forever and we don’t want to mess that up, especially since we still have to work together, and then there’s the distance problem…”
It sounded like she thought the whole thing was a mistake. Maybe it was. I lived in LA and she was moving to New York and there was no future for us. When Comic-Con ended she’d be leaving me behind. Like my parents. Like Amanda. I wasn’t going through that shit again.
“I can’t do long distance,” I said.
“Oh. I just thought, maybe…” She drew in a long breath and stood, clutching the blanket to her chest. “So what are we going to do? Go back to being friends? Try to forget last night ever happened?”
Like I could ever forget last night. I’d always remember the way she’d moaned and gripped my arms. The feel of being sheathed inside her. The taste of her on my tongue. I wished I didn’t know those things, but I did and I would never be the same.
I grabbed my shirt from the corner. “Whatever you want.”
“But what do you want?”
“I don’t know!”
“God, Hector, just talk to me! Tell me what you want from me!”
“I don’t want anything from you!”
She flinched, like I’d hit her, and I instantly regretted my words. That had been way harsh. I hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded, but I didn’t know how to smooth things over either.
She gathered her clothes off the floor while covering her breasts with one arm. She tried to put her bra on but had a hard time, like her hands were trembling. I started to move forward to help her but stopped myself. I got the feeling she didn’t want me to get any closer.
“Tara…”
“No, I understand perfectly now. It was just sex, right?” She finished dressing and snatched her shoes. “Fine. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”
At the door she hesitated like she was waiting for me to say something. But I’d stopped her from leaving last night, and in the end it had backfired on me. I should never have drawn her or kissed her, should never have revealed how much I wanted her.
I turned away. “Yeah. It was just sex.”
The door opened and closed with a click. She was gone.
I slumped down on the couch and my head dropped into my hands. I waited there for an hour in case she came back. Wishing I could rewind time and go back to before I had fucked everything up.
But she didn’t return.
* * *
I got back to my hotel room and hopped in the shower without a word to Jared, who was still in bed, alone. Maddie must have returned to her room already. Good, one less person to deal with.
The hot water washed away all physical traces of last night but couldn’t erase the memories. My mind was stuck on a loop, replaying this morning and trying to figure out how I could’ve handled things better. I came up with a thousand better responses to Tara’s questions now that it was hours later, but that only made me even more miserable.
Because it hadn’t just been sex. It had been so much more.
When I got out of the shower, Jared was making a cup of tea using hot water from the room’s tiny coffee maker. He wore a t-shirt with Freddy Krueger on it and gave me an appraising look. “Long night?”
“Leave me alone,” I muttered, rubbing my hair with a towel.
His eyebrows shot up. “Good morning to you, too. I’ll make you some coffee.”
I plopped onto the bed. “Don’t bother. I’m going back to sleep.”
He ripped open a packet of honey and poured the entire thing into his tea. For his voice, he always said. “You can’t go back to sleep. People are already lining up outside the convention center to get in.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s Comic-Con. You can’t spend your entire day in the hotel room.”
“Fuck off. I can do whatever I want.” I was being a total asshole but I couldn’t help it. Everyone wanted to talk, talk, talk, and I just wanted to be left the fuck alone.
“What the hell is going on with you?”
“I don’t want to fucking talk about it!”
He threw up his hands. “Okay, chill.”
He dropped into the chair behind the desk, playing on his phone while drinking his tea. For a few minutes I lay there with my eyes closed, but my mind wouldn’t shut up. Regret and anxiety created a sick feeling in my gut that I couldn’t get rid of. I rubbed my face, then dug out my phone to check if Tara had texted me. Yeah, right.
“Last night’s show went pretty well,” Jared suddenly said, almost as if to himself. He leaned back and propped his booted feet up on the desk. “Although I think we should add some lights behind the Villain Complex logo so it stands out more.”
He continued on about how we could improve our performance for our next shows on the tour, but I knew he didn’t expect me to reply. It was his way of letting me wallow for a while and showing he wasn’t pissed at me for snapping at him. And something about his steady voice droning on about the band made me feel a little better.
“Though I never expected Becca to show up in our dressing room,” he said, with a short laugh.
I’d missed whatever had led to that comment, but now I sat up, head spinning. My situation with Tara was not that different from Jared and Becca’s. They’d been friends with a working relationship who’d had one night of sex they’d regretted the next morning. After that, things fell apart between them until Becca left the band, and then they never spoke again. Until last night, anyway.
Would something like that happen with me and Tara? We were better friends than Jared and Becca had ever been and we’d known each other a lot longer, but that didn’t mean we weren’t heading for the same fate.
“If you’d known Becca was going to leave the band, would you still have hooked up with her?” I asked.
Jared frowned, but didn’t look up from his phone. “I wasn’t really thinking straight when it happened. But what does it matter? It worked out in the end, and we got Maddie instead.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Jared put down his phone and studied me. “What are you really asking?”
“I don’t know.” I gave up on going back to sleep and started making myself some coffee. “Do you think you and Becca could ever be friends again?”
“I’m not sure. Before yesterday I would have said no chance in hell. Even now, I don’t think we’ll ever be friends, but as least there won’t be any bad blood between us. Which is why I invited her to the party tomorrow.”
I stared off into space while the coffee maker gurgled. They’d patched things up, but they were both moving on with their lives and would probably never speak again. Would that happen to us, too? Would Tara and I both drift apart to separate lives? It seemed likely, with the band gaining popularity and her new job.
I didn’t want our friendship to be over. Or to stop collaborating with her on Misfit Squad and future books. But I didn’t know if I could repair the damage to our relationship after what had gone down.
I didn’t notice the coffee maker had finished until Jared moved to my side. He added two sugars the way I liked before handing the paper cup to me. “Becca and I were never as close as you and Tara. I don’t think you need to worry.” He coughed. “You know, if something like that ever happened to you.”
I wasn’t sure I liked this new, perceptive Jared. He seemed to have figured out the whole story without me even telling him. Damn best friends. I scowled but took the coffee from him. “Thanks.”
He grabbed his wallet and slipped it in his jeans. “I’m meeting Maddie and Kyle for breakfast, then we’re going to some panel on movie scores. You can come if you want. Or stay here. But you shouldn’t waste a day of Comic-Con moping in your room.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I’d never be able to sleep and would just make myself crazy lying in bed thinking about Tara. I could hit the gym and try to work some energy off, but then what? Sit around, driving myself insane until the party tonight? Get drunk and try to forget?
“Fine. I’m in.” Hanging out with my friends would distract me from obsessing over Tara, if nothing else. I’d force myself to put her out of my mind completely.
Until the party tonight, when I’d have to face her again.
NINE
Tara
I should have been having fun. It was Friday at Comic-Con and there were a million things to do and see and each one was better than the last.
But all I could think about was Hector.
As I wandered the exhibit hall alone (yes, I was trying to get better about that) everything reminded me of him. A woman dressed as Cruella de Vil brought to mind his friends and their villain-themed party. An artist doing a live sketch awakened memories of Hector’s drawings of me. A poster for a sci-fi TV show made me recall the times we’d watched it “together.” I’d had to record each episode and wait to watch it since I was three hours ahead of him, but it was worth it to hear his snarky live commentary, which always made me laugh.
I couldn’t even look at the Black Hat Comics booth, where our book was prominently on display. Especially since going near it ran the risk of me running into him. It was bad enough I’d have to see him at the Black Hat party tonight. Maybe it would be crowded enough I could avoid him or something. But that was stupid, because I couldn’t avoid Hector forever, and I didn’t want to either.
I paused beside a Pokémon display and pulled out my phone to text him, but couldn’t find the right words. Nothing seemed appropriate for the situation. I wanted to ask if we were okay, but I was so worried the answer would be no. Or that he’d shut me down again like this morning.
God, I wished he had just told me what he wanted. One second he’d said the drawings meant something and that he’d wanted to kiss me for years, but then he’d said it was just sex and he didn’t want anything from me. But if he didn’t want to try a long distance relationship where did that leave us?
The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted either. Twenty-four hours ago I’d only seen Hector as a friend, but now my feelings for him were all jumbled and confused. There was no denying that our sexual chemistry was off the charts. Or that last night had been incredible. Or that I felt more comfortable with him than with anyone else in the world. But even if we didn’t have the distance problem, I’d just gotten out of a serious relationship with Andy a week ago. I didn’t want Hector to be a rebound, or to use him to make me feel better about my breakup or less alone. In the past, I’d jumped straight from one boyfriend to the next because I hated being single, but I was trying to change. Hector deserved better than that.
Of course, that was assuming he saw this as more than a one night stand. He’d never had a girlfriend in all the time I’d known him, but every now and then he had some brief hook-ups. Was that all he wanted—a short fling over the next few days? But then what?
Last night threatened to ruin everything between us, but I couldn’t lose my friendship with him. He was not just the artist of my graphic novel, but the person I looked forward to talking to every day, the person I texted first with news, the person whose opinion I trusted the most about both my writing and my life. But it seemed the two of us were not meant to be anything more than friends.
And I wasn’t sure if we could even be that now.
I gave up on texting Hector and went to that panel on writing and drawing diverse characters, even though I knew he might be there. Or because I hoped he would be there. But I scanned the room and didn’t see him, and then spent the entire panel wishing he was there because I wanted to talk to him about it. I missed him so much already.
After the panel ended, I walked a couple blocks away to an area of the Gaslamp Quarter that wasn’t quite as busy as around the convention center. I ducked into a bright, modern café and found the person I was looking for, already seated at a table.
Giselle Roberts.
I made my way over to her, completely star struck, still clueless as to why she wanted to talk to me. She was a curvy black woman in her forties with dark, wavy hair and confident eyes. She always looked stylish, and today she didn’t disappoint in a form-fitting blue dress that was both sophisticated and sexy. Next to her I felt underdressed and sloppy in my ripped jeans and Legend of Korra t-shirt.
“Tara, right?” she asked, standing. She held out her hand. “I’m Giselle.”
“So nice to meet you.” I shook her hand and sat down, trying not to openly stare at her. The woman was a legend. Not only had she created some of my favorite TV shows, but she’d broken down barriers for women and people of color in entertainment and media, too. She was the closest thing I had to a role model.
“Thanks for having lunch with me,” she said. “I know it’s hard to find a spare moment during Comic-Con.”
“No, thank you. I’m flattered you wanted to meet with me. And I’m sure you’re even busier than I am.”
She laughed, a sound that seemed to bubble out of her like champagne. “Luckily, I have assistants to do all the things I don’t want to do.”
“Oh. Of course.” I wondered where her blond hipster assistant was. Off running an errand probably.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while.” She leaned forward, pressing her hands flat on the table. “I love Misfit Squad. I’ve read it three times. I’m confident it’s going to win a ton of awards next year.”
My fingers tightened on the menu, the edges digging into my skin. I wasn’t sure how to handle all this praise from someone I held in such high regard. “That’s…wow. I’m honored. Thank you.”
